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And others, don't have those issues. That makes it more difficult to fix. It's probably the minority with issues, not the majority.

That's always the common assumption but I would guess the majority of their customers don't know anything about these forums so you never hear of their issues. They have them, they curse, delete, restart, whatever voodoo we do to get past the problems but they don't come here to put it in writing.

The rep I spoke to on the phone about replacing my last HR21 that died groaned when I mentioned its very sluggish response time in basic functions. She said she still had one and was praying for it to die.

I have spoken to neighbors and friends who have DTV, Comcast, Dish, Verizon,etc. and they've never heard of these forums. So I would guess that many complaints are just never heard unless they take the time to call customer support. And probably they don't even do that unless the things just stop working completely.

As I said in my previous post so far all but one of the glitches I've had with the 34 have been minor not something I probably wouldn't see with someone else's equipment. But that one issue when 3 consecutive recordings that were all series links that were frozen and wouldn't play and had to be deleted is a major one for me. All the trick play, 30 second skip/slip, double play, resume watching in another room, etc., are things I don't actually use so if there are issues with them I'll ignore them. But basic recording and playback is the main purpose of a dvr's existence in the first place.

I've been with DTV for about 12 years and have been very happy with their service. I started out with an Ultimate TV, which I consider to be the best dvr that was available but it was not an HD device. Then wound up with a DTivo which was a very poor substitute, then the HR20s which were noisy as hell and gradually became more and more sluggish with all the software revisions, then to the abominable 21s which should just be incinerated. But even those devices with all their individual problems never failed to record or playback a program unless some external event occurred. So this first and hopefully only event for me was huge and not something I will have any patience with.

Of course they haven't heard of this board, or the others. But how many people call DirecTV to say everything is working fine? No one, so the only way to see how widespread an issue is is to take into account how many HR34s are in use and figure out the percentage. I have no idea how many are out there, but if I guessed, it probably would be low.

Yes, they should. And then they should be willing to pay $1,000 (at least) for a DVR.

I sincerely doubt that in any of your "life-critical" applications the hardware is free, or at the most $450.

As the old saying goes, you get what you pay for.

What does hardware cost have to do with it?

Hardware is far more reliable than the software put on it. How many hardware problems do we see in general? Very few. And almost all of them are caused by improper ventilation/heat. Mostly disk drives and power supplies. How many hardware bugs? Essentially zero. Noticeable bugs that affect a significant percentage of devices? Zero. Certainly many orders of magnitude less than wonky unnecessary software problems.

Why is that? Because hardware is the most expensive thing to create and maintain. You can't download a hardware fix every couple of months.

Has that made hardware more expensive in the big picture? Not a chance. The reverse is true.

There is nothing unusually complicated about a sat receiver/DVR.

In fact, the bulk of the software is not supplied by DTV. Linux (which is a basket for a whole lot of stuff contributed by many sources), Java, etc. While certainly not the best-of-breed in many respects, none of that stuff has anything to do with the problems that we see with DTV equipment. Those same technologies are in totally free "media center" implementations. I'd bet those free implementations are more stable than DTV.

The only reason DTV gets away with putting out this garbage is that it's pretty much the only game in town for getting their service (other than TiVo) and their competitors are equally unmotivated. It's called lack of competition.

In the scope of things, software development for DTV has got to be a pretty small expense for them. If it isn't then they are getting a terrible return on their investment.

Most ridiculous of all is that if they were smart enough to look at the overall cost of these blunders they would realize they could actually spend a lot more on software development and quality control and still save a bunch of money. You only write good software once.

For the first time this morning I was unable to play back 3 consecutively recorded programs. They were 3 half hour series all on the same channel. Each was aired one right after the other. The first program played to the 12 minute mark and froze. Trying to get past that point just got me to the "do you want to keep or delete" message. With the other 2 programs that aired after and were theoretically recorded when I hit play they froze immediately and gave me the keep or delete message.

I restarted the receiver but got the same results ......

Thanks for posting this problem! I was afraid I was the only one with this kind of problem. My HR 34 would be great -- if it could just record programs all the way through, without locking up the recording somewhere in the middle of the recording.

I have had to sink to the level of double-recording (the HR34 and an HR21). The HR21 never fails. The HR34 fails and locks up a recording at least once a week. I have posted in the CE issues threads.

I'm not in the CE group and I'm hoping this will not occur again. If it becomes a frequent problem and I see others reporting it I will be asking for my money back and possibly canceling my service. As I said elsewhere the main reason for the existence of a dvr is recording and playback. If it can't be relied upon to do that then it's a failure and should be discontinued.

I'm not in the CE group and I'm hoping this will not occur again. If it becomes a frequent problem and I see others reporting it I will be asking for my money back and possibly canceling my service. As I said elsewhere the main reason for the existence of a dvr is recording and playback. If it can't be relied upon to do that then it's a failure and should be discontinued.

Did I miss some other posts? I read in this thread you had one large error in losing three consecutive recordings, but anything else was inconsequential to you as long as recordings were made as requested (and will play back, of course!). Have you trouble-shot that occurrence? Could it have been a guide error? Other?

This has happened to me before with previous software versions on my HR34. I watch a video for a while, say 30 minutes. Then I switch to a tuner channel. Then I press PREV to go back to the video -- at the 30 minute mark. What happens now most of the time is that the HR34 doesn't even go back to the video, it goes back to the first channel on my LAST FOUR list. Then when I go to the LIST to select the video I actually wanted and press SELECT on the highlighted RESUME tab, the video doesn't resume where I left off, i.e. at the 30 minute mark, it "resumes" at the very beginning of the video, i.e. time equals zero.

Did I miss some other posts? I read in this thread you had one large error in losing three consecutive recordings, but anything else was inconsequential to you as long as recordings were made as requested (and will play back, of course!). Have you trouble-shot that occurrence? Could it have been a guide error? Other?

My point is that I, as well as most of us, have had many issues with these receivers. For me most of them just tried my patience but could be tolerated for a while. With the 34 in the month that I've had it several issues have occurred, one that really concerned me was a pay per view movie that had erratic video. Restarting the receiver corrected that so no big deal. But not being able to watch programs that I've recorded which a restart did not correct is a big deal. It's especially worrisome since none of all the other receivers I've had have ever done this even with all their other issues.

As I said if it's a one time thing and is not widely reported then I'll forget about it. But this is the primary reason for having a dvr, if it turns out that this was not a temporary or isolated event then I consider this to be a failure not just an annoyance. Coming from using 2 HR 21s I'm quite willing to put up with a great number of annoyances but not a total failure.

Have been pretty trouble free compared to others on this board until about 30 minutes ago!

Changed channels to channel 232 and found the 721 pop up saying I was not subscribed to that channel. During the whole time this pop up was there I was still able to watch the program even though I couldn't get the pop up to disappear! Figured I wasn't going to be watching it for long so I just left it that way. Then all of a sudden the screensaver started! I decided to do a menu reset. Well, it wouldn't reset. It just stayed blank telling me there was no input! At this point I did an RBR and now everything appears to be fine again except one show I had set up to tape this morning and it was gone! Had to reschedule it. No 721 pop up and no screensaver, so far!

After all of this I checked the software version to see if something had been updated recently and that wasn't the problem. I'm running 0x5d4.

Kind of funny to me that this would happen out of the clear blue considering my problems have been minor in the past?

Hi Everyone – A couple of quick questions (and I did a bit of a search for answers but could not find them)….

1) Can you hook up an external hard drive to the HR34?

2) I currently have 4 DVR’s (a mix of HR-22, 23 & 24) and have the “whole home viewing” hooked up. Will I be able to add the HR34 into the mix or will it require me to ditch the other receivers and get mini-genies for each room? I would prefer to just replace one of my current receivers and have the HR34 in the mix and be able to watch its content on the HR-22,23,24s.

Thanks and again, apologies if this information is elsewhere….but I swear I searched!!!

2) I currently have 4 DVR’s (a mix of HR-22, 23 & 24) and have the “whole home viewing” hooked up. Will I be able to add the HR34 into the mix or will it require me to ditch the other receivers and get mini-genies for each room? I would prefer to just replace one of my current receivers and have the HR34 in the mix and be able to watch its content on the HR-22,23,24s.

1. Yes. It replaces the internal, you can't use both at the same time. But you can use a big raid system if you want.

2. You can sub it for one of the existing receivers. The only issue is going to be the total tuner count. If you get your SWM-8 swapped for an SWM-16, you should have no problems. If you're currently using an SWM dish, that would need to be replaced to add an SWM-16. Alternatively you could turn off one tuner on each of the other receivers and be within the 8 tuner limit.

Thanks for the info! I really appreciate it. Two final questions I forgot -
1) I assume the External Hard Drive I currently have hooked up to my HR 24 will need to be reformatted (erased) if I were to hook it up to a new HR34.

2) If I decide to purchase a new external harddrive, which external 3TB drives do you recommend? Still the Western Digitials?

Thanks for the info! I really appreciate it. Two final questions I forgot - 1) I assume the External Hard Drive I currently have hooked up to my HR 24 will need to be reformatted (erased) if I were to hook it up to a new HR34.

No, actually you could keep what is on it and move it back to the HR24 to watch those shows. But you can only watch a show when the drive is connected to the machine it was recorded on. So if your plan is to move the drive to the 34 and keep it there, you might as well delete all the recordings on it before you move it. You won't be able to watch them on the 34.

Thanks for the info! I really appreciate it. Two final questions I forgot - 1) I assume the External Hard Drive I currently have hooked up to my HR 24 will need to be reformatted (erased) if I were to hook it up to a new HR34.

2) If I decide to purchase a new external harddrive, which external 3TB drives do you recommend? Still the Western Digitials?

THANKS AGAIN!!

The WD's are still the ones recommended, like their AV drive put into an enclosure. More hardcore types use their Red drives in a RAID enclosure. It's been tested with a 9TB array by another forum member.

The WD's are still the ones recommended, like their AV drive put into an enclosure. More hardcore types use their Red drives in a RAID enclosure. It's been tested with a 9TB array by another forum member.

Both WD's and Seagates work just fine and both recommended. My 9TB array was using Seagates and had no problem. I have bigger drives on all my HRs and only one of them uses WD.

I have been coming on here the past couple of months to see what issues everyone is having. I signed up with DirecTV in October and got the HR34 and one Genie client. I wasn't able to delete any of my recordings from my Genie mini client and I would also get a blank black screen when I sometimes turned on my Genie mini client. This would require a reboot on the HR34 to fix. After speaking with DirecTV and exploring more forums, here is what I did to fix my issues.

1.) I called DTV and told them my Whole Home DVR said Not Authorized. They activated this for me and within minutes my Whole Home DVR said Authorized in the HR34 Settings. Once activated, this displays a Share Playlist in the Whole Home Settings. There will be something that says Deletion from: ALL ROOMS. This solved my issue of not being able to delete programs from my Genie mini client.

2.) I turned on Genie Recommends. I have yet to see the blank black screen on my Genie client since I have done this. To turn this on, you could go to Menu, TV Shows, go down to Genie Recommends and turn it on. This does not take up any space on your DVR hard drive, it just recommends shows you may like. It has been a solid week and I haven't seen the black screen yet. I used to get it every 2-3 days.

I hope this helps everyone. I will also report back if I the black screen comes back on my Genie mini client.

2.) I turned on Genie Recommends. I have yet to see the blank black screen on my Genie client since I have done this. To turn this on, you could go to Menu, TV Shows, go down to Genie Recommends and turn it on. This does not take up any space on your DVR hard drive, it just recommends shows you may like. It has been a solid week and I haven't seen the black screen yet. I used to get it every 2-3 days.

I don't have any C31 "Genie Clients" in my setup, but I can say that my HR34 seemed a lot slower to respond to anything when I had "Genie Recommends" enabled. I've disabled that and for the most part it's been pretty good.

There's so many variables in the equation it's hard to figure out what is really the cause of the problems with this unit. I'm glad I don't have the issues some on this forum claim to have, otherwise I'd be livid.

If you judge a fish on its ability to climb a tree, you will live your whole life believing it is stupid.